Allow consistent exclusion filters between 'podman container list' & 'podman image list'

[GrabbenD]

Feature request description

$ podman image list allows the following syntax:

image filter "intermediate": must be in the format "filter=value or filter!=value"

Here's a working example:

podman image list \
    --filter='containers!=true' \
    --no-trunc='1' \
    --quiet='1'

---

However, currently when using $ podman container list this syntax only works for label filter:

Error: status! is an invalid filter

Providing a consistent filtering experience would allow us to transform this:

podman container list \
    --external='1' \
    --filter='status=created' \
    --filter='status=exited' \
    --filter='status=paused' \
    --filter='status=unknown' \
    --no-trunc='1' \
    --quiet='1'

Into:

podman container list \
    --external='1' \
    --filter='status!=running' \
    --no-trunc='1' \
    --quiet='1'

Suggest potential solution

Re-use code from podman image list --filter flag in $ podman container list --filter

Have you considered any alternatives?

Specifying filters manually by hand as shown above

Additional context

N/A

[robbmanes]

Containers are filtered using a container-specific filter in GenerateContainerFilterFuncs

podman/pkg/domain/filters/containers.go

Line 20 in 2ba3605

func GenerateContainerFilterFuncs(filter string, filterValues []string, r *libpod.Runtime) (func(container *libpod.Container) bool, error) {

whereas the images filter is from compileImageFilters https://github.com/containers/common/blob/179239ade65265594d3fb0495f0c4599a85dfa50/libimage/filters.go#L75 in c/common AFAIK. Even if merging the two routes would be ill advised, sharing syntax would be nice IMHO.

"Quick" fix would be adding negate logic to the GenerateContainerFilterFuncs to execute like the compileImageFilters logic has. Not as robust as sharing the same paths but would theoretically produce the same outputs.

[robbmanes]

Talked with @mheon; I'm going to try and rectify the c/common/filters package into this so we have a unified filter method going forward, instead of the quick fix. We could just add negate logic in c/podman for just the status term to get the behavior you described for both commands but then we're still likely to drift into different filter values as time goes on between listing containers and images. That will probably happen anyway over time due to the nature of listing containers being different than what c/common would need, but worth a shot regardless to try and unify them now for cleanliness/robustness.

[mtrmac]

FWIW, compare containers/common#1800 . The filters don’t really have a regular syntax, reference=foo,reference=bar is an OR, but (in Podman) reference!=foo,reference!=bar is an AND … and they can be both present simultaneously.

That might well be a unique special case for reference, I don’t know. Just a thing to keep in mind.

[github-actions]

A friendly reminder that this issue had no activity for 30 days.

[GrabbenD]

Bump

[rhatdan]

@robbmanes any progress?

[robbmanes]

Sorry everyone; I've been sick lately and out of work. Healthy and back now.

Reusing the code between c/image/filters and c/common/libimage/filters operations along with some other syntax as mentioned by @mtrmac for each different podman X command is proving difficult, and as I was warned when I accepted this, "has dragons". I have a stopgap of just adding the negate logic to podman container list to match what c/image/filters provides, but it's not a merging of the two. I don't know if we want to accept this or work on the larger project of setting common syntax between the various filter mechanisms. Nonetheless I think it will be okay for just merging behavior now and working on a more robust method later if we all agree.

I'll try to push it tomorrow or Tuesday for review.